Archive for October, 2011

That stupid dog can’t count and got the path formats confused. The last two results look like the first two with relative paths fit for a UNIX-like machine. I had this happen a few times while purging the computer I use at work of useless files. Several would show up all UNIX-y with slashes, and when I requested all the files be deleted, I was told that the files just found didn’t exist.

Dennis Ritchie recently passed away. He gave us, among other things, the C programming language. It is like a form of poetry enjoyed and practiced by software developer folks. He might not have thought so; he has called C quirky and flawed. The numerous new programming languages that used C syntax as a starting point suggests many people did see it poetically, or at least positively from a pragmatic standpoint. Or a deranged one; I use the descendants of C so much that I cannot tell if the poetry I see is the result of my being deranged by C. The language’s influence on computing is pervasive and extends to most things running software that are not commonly thought of as computing devices.

In short, Ritchie created the most popular form of poems in the information age, and you are benefiting from his work right now.